How Has the Political Violence Period of 1980-2000 Changed Peru?: Emergent Demographic Patterns and Readjustment of the Peruvian Regional Rural Societies

Tania R. Vasquez, University of Texas at Austin

What is the independent effect that political conflict have on demographic changes? How the phenomena of forced migration (displacement); subsequent return to the abandoned places of origin; and high mortality have shaped new behaviors affecting reproductive behavior, family size and structure, health practices and patterns of migration and settlement? This paper wants to contribute to the answers of these questions by the means of examining the case of Peru, affected by a period of political violence from 1980-1992 (2000 ). The paper focuses in the cases of the Peruvian departments most affected by the period of political conflict: Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Apurimac and Junin located in the central southern Andes. The data used are the DHS surveys for 1986, 1991-92, 1996 and 2000; the ECPR of 1997 (Characterization of the Returning Population Survey)and the census of 1981.